Tuesday, 31 May 2016

Reviews Torchwood 2.3 - Ghost Mission by Tony J Fyler

‘Never underestimate a Welshman’s
overconfidence when faced with a simple set of instructions.’ Sergeant Andy
Davidson.

Tony hears dead people.

Capsule
Review: Oh hell yes.

Rucksack
Review: After faffing about with strongly-accented Russians, Torchwood goes
back to its roots and rips the roof off with dark funnies.

Fully
unpacked and made-up flat-pack review: Have you ever had the sensation that
someone else is living your life? The life you were ‘supposed’ to have? Ever
had the feeling that you missed your single window to be special, and
brilliant, and somehow very important, and instead you’ve ended up being
just…you?

Welcome
to the life of PC, now Sergeant Andy Davidson. He’s a ‘nice bloke,’ with a good
friend who saves the world from aliens. They had similar assessment scores,
similar careers, similar instincts – but then, one day, Gwen Cooper stumbled
onto something that led her into Torchwood, and Andy Davidson didn’t.

Ten
years later, Gwen’s still saving the world, and Andy’s still…not.

Until
now.

The
Torchwood audios have run the gamut of the TV show’s many styles, and added a
whole glorious element of their own – the out-and-out funfest that turns out to
have serious undertones or underpinnings. We’re talking about episodes like
Ianto Jones’ plummet to earth while on an insurance telesales call, Fall To
Earth, and Yvonne Hartman’s night out in Cardiff, One Rule. If you enjoyed
either of those, Sergeant Andy’s exploits when a Torchwood assessor from 1953
offers him the chance to try out for the team is absolutely for you. Like One
Rule, it’s hugely Welsh, and probably if you’re familiar with the South Welsh
mindset it’s more funny than if you’re not, but there’s much more to it that
in-jokes for Welsh people. In the TV show, Andy Davidson was frequently used
for comedy relief, but this story takes you much further into the reality of
the man – and shows how Andy would deal with the weirdness with which Torchwood
deals on a daily basis. To some extent, ten years on, Andy remains how Gwen
began – resourceful, enterprising, but very much everyman, the typical
listener’s window to a very unorthodox world, so yes, he gibbers and panics a
bit as Norton Folgate, Torchwood assessor and soft-light projection, takes him
through a situation that would be typical for Torchwood. But this story from
James Goss shows us Andy in more detail, delivering a fast, fun, punchy hour of
sort-of Torchwood with more purpose than you initially guess at. Yes, just like
the previous release, Zone 10, this one manages to work in an evolution of the
whole Torchwood Vs The Committee story – in fact, ultimately, the two are quite
closely connected, inasmuch as the evolutionary elements delivered in Zone 10
show up in far more concrete ways here, and there are callbacks too to
Forgotten Lives, one of the darkest and most creepy Torchwood Audios to date.

Does
Ghost Mission bring the scares? Wellll, not as much as some others, certainly,
but the dangers are certainly real – Andy’s threatened by alien mimicky soup,
dangled from rooftops, trapped in confined spaces, drowned, probed, cloned,
threatened by a choir of actual ghosts and chased by a giant roaring monster,
as well as meeting a bunch of creepy old people who smell of wee, as well as
facing the potential humiliation of asking out a pretty girl in a café. But
Andy Davidson is really Gwen Cooper without the decade of hard decisions and
heartbreaking choices. He’s bright, he’s funny, and he’s really more
intelligent than the TV Torchwood would necessarily let you know.

‘Well,
shift your arse, Professor Quatermass!’

Tom
Price rises magnificently to the challenges of Goss’ script, bringing Andy
Davidson to a new kind of life with all the complexity, intelligence and colour
that the audio medium gives the scope to deliver. Certainly, if he was
auditioning for future Andy Davidson adventures, he knocks it out of the park –
more than some of the Torchwood regulars, Andy gives us an easy, accessible
window into the world of alien gittery, by virtue of being as-yet-unhardened by
the everyday battle.

‘You
are being so Torchwood right now. There’s no conspiracy. This is not the Moon
landings. This is a bloke from Barry, probably called Barry, having a go and cocking
it up.’

Samuel
Barnett as Norton Folgate is an utter joy, the writing by Goss dripping in
1950s ballsy camp and Polari (the dialect used by gay men when being gay was a
prosecuted crime in Britain), and Barnett delivering characterization by the bucketload
– often irritating by virtue of his camp chirpiness, he’s the Hopkirk to Andy’s
Randall, forcing him on to solve puzzle after puzzle, giving just enough of
himself back to keep Andy interested, and pushing him on from a puddle of
grocery-dissolving goo, to a facility full of vats (Vats, apparently, are never
good. Ever), to a rooftop, to the most haunted church in Cardiff and the
MacGuffin which pushes the Torchwood-Committee dynamic. Barnett and Goss
together create a character in Folgate of which we could enjoyably hear far
more (and apparently will do, according to the extras).

While
Ghost Mission is very much in the vein of these new extra-comedic Torchwood
episodes like Fall To Earth and One Rule, there’s a compelling story here in
both ‘battling aliens’ terms, ‘ongoing story-arc’ terms and most importantly in
human, character-driven terms, with the humour of Andy’s unTorchwood reactions
giving it a unique, bright breath of air most similar so far to More Than This
(in which Gwen Cooper takes a local civil servant to work with her). So while
there’s lots of character comedy here, there’s that dramatic underpinning that
makes it much more than a throwaway hour of knockabout fun with the Torchwood
wannabe.

If
you like your Torchwood shocking and jump-out-of-your-skin scary, you’ll be
less impressed with Ghost Mission. But the actual vibe of Torchwood was more
often mysterious with a ghastly dark twist than it was out-and-out scary, and
if you like that kind of thing, there’s plenty to love about Ghost Mission. If
you’ve been enjoying the funnier stories too, Ghost Mission is a fabulous
banquet. And if you like going beneath the skin of frequently underused
characters, Ghost Mission will give you a gorgeous hour of pure pleasure.

Get
to know Sergeant Andy Davidson better – he’s more than a nice bloke, after all.